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More than ten years after its announcement, the PlayStation exclusive Nioh reemerges under the guiding hand of Team Ninja for release this year. On the surface, Nioh feels like a cross between Dark Souls and Ninja Gaiden 2004 and after playing through this rather challenging alpha demo - available now on the PlayStation Store - we're excited by its potential. But for many, it's the ability to trade resolution for higher frame-rate that makes this a fascinating release. Team Ninja titles have always aimed to deliver smooth 60 frames per second experiences but Nioh throws a curveball in the mix with user-adjustable performance options. The options menu presents players with a choice between movie mode - which focuses GPU resources on image quality - or action mode, where frame-rate takes point. The choice is clear-cut: the former serves up a 1080p resolution, while the latter sees a drop to 720p, along with reduced texture filtering quality.
Beyond that, the general visual quality is strictly average at this point. There is some nice texture work and the atmosphere is absolutely fantastic, but the world seems to be polygon-starved and animation is often stiff. It's not an unattractive game by any means but it does feel decidedly last-gen in many ways and considering its roots, that isn't surprising.
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